Problem: You have found the following ages (in years) of 6 meerkats. The meerkats are randomly selected from the 22 meerkats at your local zoo: $ 8,\enspace 10,\enspace 15,\enspace 17,\enspace 12,\enspace 1$ Based on your sample, what is the average age of the meerkats? What is the variance? You may round your answers to the nearest tenth.
Explanation: Because we only have data for a small sample of the 22 meerkats, we are only able to estimate the population mean and variance by finding the sample mean $({\overline{x}})$ and sample variance $({s^2})$ To find the sample mean , add up the values of all $6$ samples and divide by $6$ $ {\overline{x}} = \dfrac{\sum\limits_{i=1}^{{n}} x_i}{{n}} = \dfrac{\sum\limits_{i=1}^{{6}} x_i}{{6$ To compensate for this underestimation, rather than simply averaging the squared deviations from the mean , we total them and divide by $n - 1$ $ {s^2} = \dfrac{\sum\limits_{i=1}^{{n}} (x_i - {\overline{x}})^2}{{n - 1}} $ $ {s^2} = \dfrac{{6.25} + {0.25} + {20.25} + {42.25} + {2.25} + {90.25}} {{6 - 1}} $ $ {s^2} = \dfrac{{161.5}}{{5}} = {32.3\text{ years}^2} $ We can estimate that the average meerkat at the zoo is 10.5 years old. There is a variance of 32.3 years $^2$.